We had our SPS Company Meeting at Orchestra Hall for the first time. It was a great venue and we had our annual Summer Picnic to follow. Such a cool space right in downtown Minneapolis.
It was also Archie’s last company meeting before retiring in October. He got a long standing ovation! 👏
Tyler's 1:1 with Archie
A few weeks ago Tyler was saying how cool it would be to have a 1:1 with Archie Black, our CEO. I shared that with Archie and he said he’d be happy to do that, but we should do lunch instead.
So today Tyler came to work with me and Archie, Tyler, and I went to the Minneapolis Club for lunch. Tyler had a number of questions and Archie did as well for him.
This picture was taken in Archie’s office before we left for lunch. He asked Tyler what his favorite sport was and of course he said soccer. Archie searched around and found one soccer ball he had (Chelsea) and gave Tyler that.
Tyler seemed pretty comfortable in my office!
Delicious August lunch: Black Krim tomatoes, sliced mozzarella, Olive Oil we brought back from Italy, salt & pepper. 🍅
We watched Pink: All I Know So Far tonight as a warmup to seeing Pink with Brandi Carlile opening in Fargo next weekend.
Chilling in swing as sun goes down at Farmhilly.
Farmhilly 8
My friend, and fellow Minnestar Catalyzer, Adrienne Peirce has this amazing house that sits on eight acres of land, and they host an annual event with bands playing all day, fun things for kids, yard games, food, and chill vibes to hang out in all day long. In all the years they have been hosting Farmhilly, we’ve never been able to attend, until this year. We finally got to attned Farmhilly 8 and had a nice chill afternoon with music, great weather, and the longest game of cornhole ever (the boys prevailed 21-20!).
It is that time of year when our neighborhood has this delicious Gem Tomato stand run by our neighbors and friends the Millers. We brought home several to eat fresh.
This is the same tomato stand that is in our Land of Things puzzle.
I was curating my On This Day section this morning and found this 15 year old reference to @bjhess! One of my favorite things about blogging is the long history that you can create. Thanks for the Brightkite invite Barry! 🤣
We had a fun night doing a Murder Mystery Dinner and I decided to really embrace my character. “Little Fitz is a vaudevillian star of the Music Halls of Europe, where his ventriloquist act with Ziggy has proven very popular.”
Ziggy and I may have future appearances. 🤣
It was great to see Steve Earle tonight at the Dakota on his “Alone Again” tour. Just him and his guitars sharing a wide array of songs from his catalog.
It was awesome to hear Zandi Holup open up for Steve Earle tonight. She played a good set of original songs but unfortunately none of them are published yet.
Mazie posted her first blog post about her photo walk in Soglio, Switzerland. She has her own micro.blog site for easy publishing. 🎉
She is a fabulous writer so I’m hoping she will share her talents with the world.
Allergies hit me hard today. Medicine didn’t seem to do much. Feels like something different than typical ragweed. Tammy also got it bad and she usually doesn’t have allergies that bad. 😬
Update: Allergies drove me to buy an air purifier from Amazon for delivery tomorrow. Haven’t tried air purifiers before but many say they work wonders.
We decided to return to Switzerland tonight by watching the 2015 release of Heidi. I hadn’t seen the movie and wasn’t familiar with the story and thought it was fun to watch, and I loved the role the Alps played in it.
It dawned on me that my Blockclock has upgradeable firmware and today I jumped from 1.07 to 1.22!
I was also having intermittent WiFi issues and realized that the Blockclock binds to a specific WiFi access point by MAC address, so I added multiple ones for more reliability.
We all went to Barbie tonight and it blew right past my already high expectations. It was a fun movie while still covering important topics. Plus, the 2001: A Space Odyssey sequence in the beginning was just delightful! Highly recommended. 🍿
While we were in Soglio, Switzerland at the end of our hiking trip we all got our cameras out and did a photo walk of the village. Here are my ten highlights. Also see Mazie’s photos and Tyler’s photos.
Switzerland & Italy Log - Day 17
Weather: Warm morning in Florence. Airports fine.
- Pack up suitcases for journey home
- Breakfast at hotel
- Taxi to Florence Airport
- Tyler forgets Pokémon gifts in airport at another gate and runs back and is able to recover them right before we board. 😳
- KLM 1642 City Hopper flight to Amsterdam
- Flight delayed over 40 mins due to baggage loading issues. Anxious with an already short transfer to next flight.
- Another Amazing Race experience as we dashed from the Cityhopper late arrival to gate D47 with only 25 minutes to departure. Cleared passport control on super-fast-cut-in-front-of-everyone and were the last four welcomed onto the plane by the KLM gate agent waving us along! 🏃🏼♀️🏃🏼♂️🏃🏼♀️🏃🏼♂️
- Delta 165 to Minneapolis landed at 5p CT
- Lyft ride home
- Home Sweet Home!
Jump to day 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 or Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.